This presentation from R. Pratt and B. Whetstone from UGA's College of Agriculture and Environmental Sciences outlines key strategies for section 508 web accessibility compliance, with a focus on multimedia content.
How many people are dealing with accessibility issues? Dirt basic stuff here. We are not lawyers.
Some content would be completely impossible to access if you had a disability.
This doesn’t even take into account users who may read screen readers because their eyes/hands are busy doing something else, people in noisy or low-light environments, or people who disable graphics because of slow connections or a type of device (mobile) that we didn’t design .
What is the right thing? How do we know? Who sets the standard? Brings me to my last reason for caring about accessibility: it’s the law. So let’s look at the law that governs web accessibility: 508.
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! As usual, the explanation the federal government provides us is clear as glass. I’d encourage you instead to to think about people and the help they might need to be able to fully use your web site. The following techniques come from summaries of 508 requirements and solutions to meet these requirements. If you can include these techniques as part of your development process, you’ll be in good shape.
Why is it important to separate structure from content with CSS? Example: CSS allows precise control over spacing, alignment and positioning. Authors can thereby avoid "tag misuse" - the practice of misusing a structural element for its expected stylistic effects. For example, while the BLOCKQUOTE and TABLE elements in HTML are meant to mark up quotations and tabular data, they are frequently used to create visual effects instead such as indentation and alignment. When specialized browsing software such as a speech synthesizer encounters elements that are misused in this way, the results can be unintelligible to the user.
http://www.w3.org/WAI/wcag-curric/table.htm
Accesskey allows users to access links via keyboard shortcuts. Tab through the site yourself, or use a tool like Firefox Developer to show tab order. Audio and video presents its own set of challenges, which Ben will tell you about in a minute.
The big picture, the point I want you to get, is that you need to think about your audience, provide alternatives for accessing content, and you need to test. We are used to accommodating people, this is just another way we do it.
This is a specific example of the way we handled video.. Hopefully it’ll be clear that there are lots of ways to do this. “ Make our site look current!” We were noobs. Our non-negotiable objectives. 1) Maintainability 2) Supportable cost 2) Accessible
WGBH – Boston Public Broadcasting strives to make their content accessible to those w/ disabilities, and has developed a flash player that displays captions very well. But it’s ugly. We said no to the CC Player
UGLY! and Not widely used Not widely supported
The real crux of the issue is that, for web content to actually be accessible, someone’s going to have to do the work. This may or may not be you. When it’s not, convincing content providers to do “extra” work – web content, video content, etc – is difficult. In our unit, we have a number of individuals who believe either in following the letter or the spirit of the law, and inasmuch as we provide content for our websites we are able to do a fairly good job. But when no one is obviously looking over our shoulder, it’s tempting to take the easier route… So if this is something you think is worth doing, how do you convince others?
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